TEMPUS Magazine redefines time, giving you a glimpse into all things sophisticated, compelling, vibrant, with its pages reflecting the style, luxury and beauty of the world in which we live. A quarterly publication for private aviation enthusiasts.
Issue link: http://tempus-magazine.epubxp.com/i/447005
Tempus-Magazine.com Holiday 2014 / 2015 77 made in his earlier deposition, including his claim that he had only seen Atanasoff 's computer partly covered and in dim light. Atanasoff, by contrast, was very effective. He described the machine he had built, demonstrated a model, and pointed out which of his ideas Mauchly had borrowed. In all, seventy-seven witnesses were called to testify, another eighty were deposed, and 32,600 exhibits were entered into the record. Te trial lasted more than nine months, making it the longest federal trial to that point. Judge Larson took another nineteen months to write his fnal decision, which was issued in October 1973. In it he ruled that the Eckert-Mauchly ENIAC patent was invalid: "Eckert and Mauchly did not themselves frst invent the automatic electronic digital computer, but instead derived that subject matter from one Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff." Instead of appealing, Sperry settled with Honeywell. Te judge's opinion, at 248 pages, was thorough, but it disregarded some signifcant differences between the machines. Mauchly did not derive quite as much from Atanasoff as the judge seemed to think. For example, Atanasoff 's electronic circuit used binary logic, whereas Mauchly's was a decimal counter. Had the Eckert- Mauchly patent claims been less sweeping, they probably would have survived. Te case did not determine, even legally, who should get what proportion of the credit for the invention of the modern computer, but it did have two important con- sequences: it resurrected Atanasoff from the basement of history, and it showed very clearly, though this was not the intent of the judge or either party, that great in- novations are usually the result of ideas that fow from a large number of sources. An invention, especially one as complex as the computer, usually comes not from an individual brainstorm but from a collaboratively woven tapestry of creativity. Mauchly had visited and talked to many people. Tat perhaps made his invention harder to patent, but it did not lessen the impact he had. Mauchly and Eckert should be at the top of the list of people who deserve credit for inventing the computer, not because the ideas were all their own but because they had the ability to draw ideas from multiple sources, add their own innovations, execute their vision by build- ing a competent team, and have the most infuence on the course of subsequent developments. Te machine they built was the frst general-purpose electronic com- puter. "Atanasoff may have won a point in court, but he went back to teaching and we went on to build the frst real electronic programmable computers," Eckert later pointed out.78 A lot of the credit, too, should go to Turing, for develop- ing the concept of a universal computer and then being part of a hands-on team at Bletchley Park. How you rank the historic contributions of the others depends partly on the criteria you value. If you are enticed by the romance of lone inventors and care less about who most infuenced the progress of the feld, you might put Atanasoff and Zuse high. But the main lesson to draw from the birth of computers is that innovation is usually a group effort, in- volving collaboration between visionaries and engineers, and that creativity comes from drawing on many sources. Only in storybooks do inventions come like a thunderbolt, or a lightbulb popping out of the head of a lone individual in a basement or garret or garage. A N I N V E N T I O N , E S P E C I A L L Y O N E A S C O M P L E X A S T H E C O M P U T E R , U S U A L L Y C O M E S N O T F R O M A N I N D I V I D U A L B R A I N S T O R M B U T F R O M A C O L L A B O R A T I V E L Y W O V E N T A P E S T R Y O F C R E A T I V I T Y . C O N T R O L C E N T E R The control panels of Colossus, the world's frst electronic programmable computer, at Bletchley Park. CH . 2 T H E I N N O V A T O R S : HOW A GROUP OF HACKERS, GENIUSES AND GEEKS CREATED THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION